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Clumsily Ever After

January 3, 2008

By Erica Funk, Blue Mound, IL

There was a clumsy woman who tried so hard to find a husband to love her. Her name was Crystal. Crystal wasn’t drop dead gorgeous, but she didn’t think she looked too bad. She was about 5’7” and had long, curly, brown hair with dark blue eyes and freckles all over her face. It all started when she was about twenty-three years old living in New York City, working as a kindergarten teacher. She was trying to settle down with someone, and every guy she went out with seemed to be the perfect guy. Everything would go great until she moved in with them and the guys realized she was a clumsy fool, and that would be the end of that. Then she found someone named Chris. Chris was six feet tall and was somewhat skinny with brown hair and brown eyes which were covered by thick rimmed glasses. He had a small lawyer firm in the suburbs of New York City. He was usually pretty good about staying calm during her “clumsy spells”, as she called them. Crystal had moved into his modern apartment about a month ago. It was much nicer than her previous one. It contained: two bedrooms, one bathroom, a wide-open living/dining room, and a huge kitchen with marble counters and stainless steal appliances. One night, when she came home from work, Chris was sitting on the floor wrapping a package for his mother’s birthday. She went over to bend down and give him a kiss on the forehead, and when she did, she lost her balance and smashed the present. As she smashed it, she heard what sounded like someone taking plates and just throwing them down on the floor. Chris grabbed her by her waist and pushed her out of the way, but it was too late; she had smashed the glass angel he had bought for his mom. He through the present away and came back into the room. It was then that Crystal realized that he was not going to let this one slide. While he was yelling at her, all she could think about was how she had just ruined a great thing with such a great guy. The rest of the night she was miserable and they went to bed without speaking. Every time she did something clumsy the next few months, he reacted the same way. One night, while in a bad mood about the recent fight with Chris, she went to a bar with a couple friends: Barbara, Cindy, and Susan. While there, Cindy introduced Crystal to a very good looking man, named Kevin. He was about 6’1” with black hair, blue eyes, and a flawless face. He definitely worked out because he had cuts in his arms and even through his shirt you could tell he had some muscle. Kevin was a manager at a nearby grocery store. The two of them had an immediate connection. For a couple weeks Crystal kept seeing Kevin behind Chris’s back. They spent any available time together. The thing Crystal loved most was that when she did something clumsy he seemed to like her even more. She did feel bad though; she liked both of them, but knew she could only be with one of them. At night she lay in bed comparing the two of them. Kevin seemed more understanding and loving towards her clumsiness, but Chris seemed to be more stable with a career and all. Then all at once while at a restaurant with Chris, he proposed to her. She still hadn’t come up with whom she liked more. She sat there for what seemed like three hours to her. Then she said, “Chris I do like you very much, but I can’t marry you because I’ve met someone else whom I love.” Chris barely managed to ask, “Why?” “He understands me and he embraces my clumsiness and all you do is make me feel like a complete fool who can’t do anything right.” With that she got up, left, and went straight to Kevin’s. When she got there he opened the door completely surprised to see her. She told him everything between bursting into tears. After she was done he gave her a big, loving hug. When she got up to leave, he grabbed her arm; and when he did, she fell flat on her face. After making sure she was okay, he pulled a box out of his pocket and asked her to marry him and she immediately said yes. In the following years of getting married, her clumsiness only increased. She backed his brand new truck into a telephone pole. She burnt his birthday cake, and then on many occasions she had gotten them lost by misreading the directions, but every time he just smiled, hugged her, and told her it’s going to be okay. They lived clumsily ever after.

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